30 November, 1996

November 30th, 1996

Processing Pictures

Today was a really long day. I spent nearly all of it processing the digital photos I took in the field. There were 150 pictures which are now stored on 48 floppy disks! I started just after 9:00 am and finished at 1:00 am on Sunday. Long days like this are the norm here. We leave in only 10 days, so we have so much to accomplish in a short time.

I plug the camera into the computer and have it "play" a picture stored on a special kind of disk. I then preview the image, to see how it looks. The images are in "grayscale" which is black and white. Have you ever put on a pair of sunglasses on a bright day? Many times it is easier to see the features. I use the computer to adjust the brightness and contrast in the photo. This has a similar effect. After the image is adjusted I capture it on disk. I will be saving all of the photos in several different places.

We also celebrated Thanksgiving today. By having the day off on a Saturday, everyone gets a two day weekend. A team of volunteers prepared the food and the decorations. It was really nice. I had fish that had been caught right here in McMurdo. It was really nice, too. Like any Thanksgiving, I ate too much. So Mrs. Bennett and I took a walk to hut point after dinner. Discovery hut is there. Scott used this hut on several occasions although it was never lived in (they stayed on the ship). It is in pristine condition, the air here is so dry the wood doesn't rot, even though it is very old. There is a mummified seal on the porch. Just beyond the hut is a cross that is dedicated to a member of Scott's crew who died falling through the ice. We saw a huge seal! It moved around a bit so we could see all sides.